


Penniless and Tired

by APgeeksout



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode: s04e16 On the Head of a Pin, Hurt/Comfort, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-05-01
Updated: 2009-05-01
Packaged: 2017-11-22 22:31:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/615077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/APgeeksout/pseuds/APgeeksout
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s a little like… well, Sam’s not sure what it’s like, because being transported via angel isn’t like anything he’s ever been familiar with.  He totally fails at recalling any experience that makes for a passable comparison.  But there’s that rustle of feathers he can’t see and a wave of vertigo worse than any hangover the visions ever left him with and then he finds himself kneeling on the cold pavement of an ambulance bay, gulping in air that tastes like ozone and clutching a wheezing Dean against him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Penniless and Tired

**Author's Note:**

> Title snagged from the Fleet Foxes "He Doesn't Know Why"
> 
> Thoughtfully beat'd by nativestar and apreludetoanend

It’s a little like… well, Sam’s not sure what it’s like, because being transported via angel isn’t like anything he’s ever been familiar with.  He totally fails at recalling any experience that makes for a passable comparison.  But there’s that rustle of feathers he can’t see and a wave of vertigo worse than any hangover the visions ever left him with and then he finds himself kneeling on the cold pavement of an ambulance bay, gulping in air that tastes like ozone and clutching a wheezing Dean against him.     

His brother seems unaffected by the trip, maybe because he’s been on this ride a few times before, but probably because he’s too battered to notice a little dizziness, even if he were conscious.  Dean is slack in his arms, swollen face lolling against his chest, undamaged hands limp against his own stomach and Sam’s knee, legs flung out loosely on the tarmac beneath them.  All smeared with enough blood that he can’t even guess at its source, and this is all too familiar.  Suddenly, he’s got too many memories to compare the moment with, and maybe that’s why his first cry for help is so choked off.

  
He has to try again before his voice carries far enough to attract the attention of the EMTs grabbing a smoke in the shadow of the building.  They hurry to him and he relinquishes Dean easily.  For all the power crackling under his skin and coiled around his spine and thrumming through him with every heartbeat, for every incredible thing he’s discovered he’s capable of lately, Sam knows that fixing his brother is beyond him.  Still.  Always.

 

 

The medical staff seems to buy Sam’s story about a gambling debt being collected the hard way, as does the grim-faced police officer who leaves with a description of the three fictitious out-of-town thugs who tracked his brother here from Cheyenne.  It makes him nostalgic for a time when this kind of dodge was the most complicated lie he had to tell to protect his family.  Mostly, though, it makes him wish Dean were awake to trade a knowing look over the gullibility of overworked nurses or to denigrate his bullshit artistry in that way that Sam has always known really counts as a compliment.

  
Instead, Dean’s still and silent and breathing through a tube, face and neck discolored by fresh bruises and obscured by raw cuts and bandages and plastic hoses.  And Sam is as helpless as he was listening to a detached doctor rattle off the symptoms of heart failure or grasping at straws with a Ouija board or pinned to the wall of a McMansion watching Lillith drag Dean beyond the help of any hospital.  If he didn’t have so many unwelcome memories of them, it’d be like the last four years never happened; nothing he’s done or learned or accepted or forfeited has made a damn bit of difference.  Okay, so he‘s stronger than Dean these days, but that means fuck all when he still ends up in the same place: standing by while the universe tries to take his brother away, as powerless as the civilian he used to wish he could be.

  
He reaches a hand toward Dean, but stops short of actually making contact.  And this, too, is infuriatingly like every other time he’s found himself in this position – the irrational fear that Dean is too fragile to be touched, that Sam’s need to reassure himself will somehow injure him further.

  
He settles into the vinyl chair beside the bed and watches Dean sleep soundly for what’s probably the first time in months, drugged too deeply for even the grisliest nightmares to penetrate.  He feels his fear and impotence congeal into a cool, clean anger that he knows he’ll have to unleash or choke on. 

  
So he’s relieved, almost _glad_ , to register the drop in air pressure that heralds Castiel’s arrival in the hallway.       


 

 

He’ll never be sure whether Castiel had anything to do with it, but when the doctor decides early the next morning that Dean’s throat has healed enough to justify removing the tube, Sam wants to believe that it’s some sort of time-release miracle.  That Heaven is at least as willing to protect his brother as to pulverize him. 

  
When Dean regains consciousness a couple of hours later, it happens suddenly – with a sharp gasp and his hands flying gracelessly up to shield his face from an already-vaporized threat – and Sam doesn’t give half a damn who or what the credit belongs to. 

  
“Hey, nice of you to join me,” he says softly, trying to draw Dean’s gaze to him, to anchor him in this room, this moment.   

  
When it works, Sam almost has to look away again.  Every fear and slight and shame and grief that Dean usually papers over and brazens through is there, naked and raw in his eyes. 

  
After a long moment, Dean takes a ragged breath, blinks deliberately, and when he opens his eyes again, enough of his shutters are back in place that he only looks tired and sore and a little disoriented.  Sam almost flinches, remembering how often he’s sneered at his brother’s supposed weakness over the last weeks.  Wonders when he forgot how much strength it takes just to keep moving sometimes. 

  
“…happened?” Dean prompts, voice an uneven rasp that makes them both wince. 

  
“You remember Alistair busting loose?” he asks, reaching out to help Dean’s atypically clumsy hands rearrange the IV tubes and monitoring leads snarled by his startle back to awareness. 

  
He nods wearily, and Sam continues, trying to anticipate Dean’s questions, wording his answers carefully.  “Well, Castiel was there.  Alistair’s… taken care of.  We’re at a hospital in Casper; you’ve been out for almost a day.”

   
Dean takes a minute to process, and Sam can’t quite tell if he’s looking for the holes in that story or just fighting off the painkillers.  “Cas?” he asks, the syllable almost catching in his abused throat. 

   
Sam busies himself pouring a glass of water from the pitcher at the foot of the bed and bites back the urge to vent about the angels, saying only, “He brought us here.  Far as I know he’s catching whatever’s killing angels.” 

  
Dean nods again, reaches for the glass with a trembling hand.  Sam sticks close, helps guide the glass to his mouth, a little disheartened when Dean doesn’t raise even a token protest, just sinks deeper into the pillows.    

  
“Get some rest, Dude,” he adds, brave enough now to reach out and smooth a hand over his brother’s hair, telling himself he’s not testing Dean as much as soothing him.    


 

 

Sam doesn’t know when or how he fell asleep scrunched in the hard chair in Dean’s room – what he does with Ruby usually leaves him too wired to fall asleep even when he _wants_ to - but he knows what wakes him.  The lights are dim and they’re alone, but the room reeks of ozone.  Dean is awake, eyes fixed on the ceiling.     

  
“Dean? You ok?”   
  
He looks less broken in this low light, his bruises and the deep circles under his eyes blending into the room’s shadows, but it’s an illusion.  One his brother doesn’t seem to be able to take advantage of, given that the noise that escapes from his throat isn’t an answer or an evasion or a dismissive snicker or anything else Sam knows what to do with.  It’s a quiet sob that Dean doesn’t even try to suppress.    
  
When Sam unfreezes, hating the part of himself that’s so paralyzed, he sits on the edge of the bed and rests a hand over Dean’s heart.  He doesn’t have to know why Castiel was here or what he said to know that it’s not enough.  He already knows that fixing his brother is beyond him.  Still and always.  


End file.
